Trump arms National Guard in DC, threatens other cities

National Guard troops stand guard outside a Shake Shack in Washington, D.C.

(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images)

What happened

National Guard troops patrolling Washington, D.C., began carrying weapons Sunday, under orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Arming the Guard members, now numbering more than 2,200, was an escalation of President Donald Trump's federal takeover of law enforcement in the capital. Trump also threatened to deploy the National Guard to Baltimore, after saying Friday his next targets were Chicago and then New York.

Who said what

The National Guard said in a statement that the troops from D.C. and six other states will carry their service weapons — M17 pistols and M4 carbine rifles — under rules that "allow use of force only as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm." According to a Pentagon official, "only troops on certain missions would carry guns," The Associated Press said.

Trump activated the National Guard and sent swarms of federal agents into D.C. on Aug. 11, saying they would help the newly federalized local police crack down on crime. But the Guard's "mission remains vague, and much of the overall federal law enforcement effort has focused on low-level crimes and detention of undocumented immigrants," The New York Times said. "In practice," The Wall Street Journal said, Trump's federal takeover of D.C. "looks a lot like an immigration raid."

The Pentagon has spent weeks preparing for a potential operation in Chicago involving National Guard and maybe active-duty forces, The Washington Post said. Democrats, including the governors of Illinois and Maryland and mayors of Chicago and Baltimore, "pilloried" the proposed federal incursion, "calling the idea unlawful and unnecessary," the Post said. People are "begging" for cheaper groceries, Medicaid coverage and the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on social media, not "an authoritarian power grab of major cities."

What next?

Trump would have "much less power over Chicago and Baltimore than he does over the District of Columbia," a federal enclave with limited self-governance, Reuters said.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.